Rag Pickers, Quartier Mouffetard, Paris |  Art Institute of Chicago (1917.440) | |
| Number: | 29 | |
| Date: | 1858 | |
| Medium: | etching and drypoint | |
| Size: | 152 x 90 mm | |
| Signed: | 'Whistler' at lower right | |
| Inscribed: | '1858' at lower right (5) | |
| Set/Publication: | no | |
| No. of States: | 5 | |
| Known impressions: | 80 | |
| Catalogues: | K.23; M.23; T.31; W.17 | |
| Impressions taken from this plate (80) | ||
STATE
Five states are known.
State 1
Signed 'Whistler' (the 's' reversed) sideways at lower right.
The details of the interior are basically complete; there are no figures.
The impression illustrated has a small stain at the lower left corner of the image.
State 2
Fine lines in all directions are added on the wall over the bed, including a few nearly vertical lines at upper right; heavier shading is added to the shadows on the wall and to the beam just above them.
State 3
Considerable shading is added to the walls, two of the bags or rags hanging on the wall at left, the ceiling and the floor; the pot at lower left is now shaded with crosshatched lines, and there is more horizontal shading on the plate beside it.
State 4
The shadow at lower right, between the wastebasket and the doorway, is darkened by lines in all directions; pale curving horizontal lines are added to the foreground, in front of the doorstep.
State 5
Inscribed '1858', in drypoint, sideways to the right of the plate signature.
Two figures are added, one seated in or on the bed and the other standing; a curved line is added below the horizontal shading on the plate next to the pot at lower left; a curving line or scratch extends below the five short horizontal lines on the wall to the right of the doorway, above the signature.
On some impressions, the platemark has sharp corners. However, the tips of the plate corners were clipped off before the latest impressions were printed, and the platemark corners on those prints are blunt diagonals.